Jealousy In Othello

Jealousy -- one of the ugliest and most shunned emotions in society -- has journeyed alongside the human race from ever since its beginning to now, millennia later. Its relevance to the human condition has repeatedly been proven through its portrayal in various stories, texts, and films from all different times and ages. Two notable tales involving the theme jealousy are William Shakespeare’s Othello and its parallel modern adaptation, Omkara. Although both Shakespeare’s Othello and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara portray the vile emotion of jealousy, courtesy of their centuries’ time difference, their understanding of jealousy is fundamentally different. While Othello depicts jealousy as an unreasonable monster and an evil way of life, Omkara illustrates

In Othello, it is the jealous person’s fault for choosing to be jealous and for allowing the parasitic monster that is jealousy to take over them. When Iago first insinuates to Othello that Desdemona is being unfaithful to him with Cassio, Iago warns, “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!/ It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/ the meat it feeds on.” (Shakespeare 3.3.195-197), to which Othello replies, “Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy,/ To follow still the changes of the moon/ With fresh suspicions?” (Shakespeare 3. 3. 208-210). From Iago’s description of jealousy and Othello’s response, readers can gather that in Shakespeare’s time, jealous people were seen as fools who had let the malicious jealous beast inside them mock and consume them. This is especially true for Roderigo, another jealous person in Othello who is blatantly portrayed as a fool throughout the entire play, and Iago, who is portrayed as a villainous soul plagued with darkness from the very beginning. Othello depicts jealousy as the result of the weakness of the jealous person and their own incapability of driving the corrupt monster from their